


Bloodstained Fingertips

by plinys



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Blood, Gen, Stannis FicArt Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 04:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of an attack on her life, Stannis talks with his daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bloodstained Fingertips

**Author's Note:**

> For this Stannis FicArt Week Prompt:  
> Stannis was prepared for counseling his future son after his first battle, he didn’t prepare for finding Shireen with blood stained hands

She has grown undoubtedly in his absence, gone is the child who played in the gardens, in its place sits a young woman with waves of dark hair cascading over her shoulders and a blood stained skirt.

Many times he had imagined having this conversation with a son, eyes opened by the truth of wars and battles, much like a conversation his father had given him years before on a hunting trip just outside Storm’s End.

However, he had not been given a son, just a daughter.

A sickly daughter, but a daughter all the same. One who had proved her strength when he wasn’t watching.

She is not looking up at him, but rather her gaze is focused on the knife that she is still holding in her hands, blood stained fingers running across the edge of it.

They shake ever so slightly.

“Shireen,” Stannis speaks after hanging in the doorway for a moment, and finally her eyes flicker up from the blade to meet his ever so briefly, before lowering her gaze once more

“Father,” Shireen answers.

Where does one even begin with this sort of conversation?

For it is not on the battlefield that Shireen took her first man, but in a tower where she was to be safe. The men sent to kill them, no doubt Lannister men, had gutted many of their guards, but was stopped in the final moment by this young girl and her letter opener.

He supposes that after this he will have to get her a real blade, something that she can use to protect herself, if this ever happens again.  

So he takes the seat awkwardly beside her and places a hand upon her shoulder.

There’s the briefest hint of a flinch away, before she regains her composure, head held high.

“I’ve ruined my dress,” she says giving a dismal look to the fabric which had been a soft gray, now they were dark brown and red splotches upon it and a rip up the side, “mother would be dismayed.”

Stannis didn’t quite to know what to make of that, whether for the content of her words or of the deadpan tone in which she delivered them, so lackluster in comparison to the times they had spoken before.

He was normally the stiff one in their conversations as Shireen would excitedly tell him about what she had read or the games she had played. This time the tables were much turned.

“It does not matter,” he settles for in the end. No doubt Selyse would have been displeased, dismayed not being the best word to describe her, honestly Stannis was not certain that Selyse had the capacity to be dismayed. However, in the battle Selyse had been killed, and Shireen had nearly been killed as well.

To think that he might have lost her, his daughter, his heir, had not been a pleasing thought.

“No,” she remarks quietly, “I suppose not.”

“We will have another made for you.”

“That won’t be necessary father,” Shireen replies with a small frown, “I have others.”

The silence stretched between them for a moment longer, before he spoke up, “you did well,” he starts and for the first time since he entered the room she looks up at him, confusion in her blue eyes, “it is not an easy thing to do but-“

“We all must do our duty,” Shireen finishes, her voice a bit hesitant.

“There are times when doing your duty is not easy, and there are times where people will be hurt.”

“Oh yes, I know,” she says running her fingers over the blade once more, as if hypnotized by the way the dried blood stands starkly against the metal.

“There will be many more fights like this, people who will try to stop us, who will try to hurt you.”

“Because I am the princess,” Shireen nodded, “and one day I will be queen. A queen must do her duty, even if it is unpleasant.”

Even if it was unpleasant, they all had a duty to do. Stannis had his own duties, a war to fight and kingdom to reclaim, but there were also his duties as a father. Ones that he had not been entirely equipped to deal with, duties that he had never entirely understood.

When Shireen said no more, though no longer seeming to be lost or shell-shocked he stood up from his seat and moved to leave. It was only as he had nearly crossed through the doorway that she spoke up once more simply saying, “thank you, father.”  

 


End file.
